Welsh Liberal Democrats Councillor for Cwmbwrla Ward, City and County of Swansea - Visit my main website at www.peterblack.wales

Sunday, July 28, 2013

UKIP are the laziest party

Nigel Farage's party can do no wrong. How else cam we explain the fact that they continue to soar in the polls when any sane evaluation of their policies, their membership and what they get up to when elected screams out that people should not touch them with a barge pole?

Leader Nigel Farage has the fifth worst attendance record out of all 752 MEPs. His anti-European Union party sidekicks Godfrey Bloom and deputy leader Paul Nuttall, who each pocket more than £60,000 a year in Brussels salaries, are even lazier.Mr Bloom is second only to Ireland’s Brian Crowley in missed votes — attending less than a third. Mr Nuttall sits fourth last, voting just 46% of the time. The figures, unearthed by the Mirror, mean UKIP has three of the top five laziest MEPs.Overall, the anti-EU party’s 11 MEPs miss a third of all votes — double the European average. The pro-Europe Lib Dems are the hardest-working British party in Brussels — attending 87% of votes. The Greens come in next on 84.8%, Labour third on 82.7%, and the Tories second from bottom with an 80.4% attendance record.

And there is more:

UKIP attendance at European committee meetings is even worse than its MEPs’ voting record — standing at just 30%.Mr Nuttall has attended just two out of 56 meetings of the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee since June 2010. Colleague Trevor Colman has been at one of 52 gatherings of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee.Minutes show Mr Farage attended just one of 42 Fisheries Committee meetings between February 2010 and his resignation from all committees in January this year.

To be fair UKIP say that Mr. Bloom and Mr Crowley have been ill but that does not excuse the performance of the rest of UKIP's MEPs.

Maybe we should stop treating UKIP with kid gloves and actually tell voters what they will get in next year's European elections if they vote for this party.

UKIP MEP's such as Nuttall have consistently said in public that they will spend more time working on their own patches back in the UK than in Brussels.

You also of course conveniently forget to mention that Wales' UKIP MEP John Bufton has already been highlighted by the Western Mail (no friend of UKIP) as being the hardest working of the Welsh MEP's and recoded as asking the most questions in the Parliament of the 4.

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